What I find interesting: We need a bootfitter - accepted. We should ideally not go in with pre-assumptions about what boot we want but let the boot fitter do their expertise.
BUT.
If we're unprepared or naive, we can easily end up in the wrong boot (or ski, tbh)
YIKES.
In my experience you can eventually get to the point where you don't need a bootfitter. By that time, though, you've put a ton of time and money into the boot game.
I almost gave up skiing entirely this year because of my boots, and they are expensive junior race hothouse flowers that were selected by a fitter and carefully modified for me. I liked them a lot when I got them, but I put on weight recently and my feet changed just a little and now the boots are a painful waking nightmare. I snowboarded most of the season and loved it; the boots are AMAZING. But then the soft powder turned to hard groomers and riding the board was ok, but falling was more consequential.
So I decided that I needed "good-enough" ski boots. Boots that maybe don't fit like a glove, but are
adequate, or can be made adequate. I just wanted to put on my boots without taking the stupid liner out first, without having to heat the stupid shells, and without a massive, stupid
I Love Lucy-style struggle every day. My feet are crazy-narrow and low volume, so anything other than a race boot is going to be a little too roomy.
I went online and bought a pair of non-race boots on sale from Evo, then picked up a pair of lightly-used high-volume Intuition liners off Facebook, put an off-the-shelf footbed in them, and
voila: I have "good-enough" boots. I've skied them for three days now and they are fine. Not perfect, not completely snug, but they don't hurt and the fit is close enough for decent control.
Most people I guess are lucky not to have to settle for "just ok" boots, but after all this time and effort and money and struggle, I don't need a bootfitter to tell me what my choices are. But I also knew how to make these "ok" boots work because of all of my previous struggles and visits to the fitter.